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This section was my workspace for philosophy essays between July 2006 and April 2008.
I call this "Prehistoric Kilroy" because it gave me practice for more
disciplined essays in Kilroy Cafe.Also see my philophical blog and Twitter feed.

Issue #92,
6/3/2007

Showdown at Morro Bay

By Glenn CampbellFamily Court Philosopher

He seemed like the classic pedophile: a middle-aged man with no stable
address who had crossed state lines in a rental
car with two underage girls.
The three were encountered by a park ranger at
a remote campground on the California coast after someone dialed 911 from the
camp's payphone then hung up.

The two girls were found walking together after dark on a campground
road. When asked who they were with, they couldn't give a clear answer.
It wasn't their father or a relative but some other guy. They were
clearly unhappy. They were hungry, they said, and they hadn't showered
in two days. The man had refused to allow them to make phone calls and
was holding them at this campground against their will.

The man himself appeared from the darkness a few minutes later. Per
procedure in such cases,
the officer separated him from the girls and went back and
forth between the two, interviewing them separately. The man was asked
to sit at a picnic table on one side of the road while the girls sat on
the ground on the other side. Eventually, the girls were moved into the
cab of the ranger's pickup truck.

One of the girls, age 11, said that both of her parents were deceased.
The other girl, age 14, was apparently a runaway. The dispatcher told
the ranger over the radio that this girl was the subject of a missing person report out
of Las Vegas.

The man, age 47, provided a Nevada driver's license that
appeared valid. He had no outstanding wants or warrants. However, the
California Highway Patrol did have an "index number" for him, indicating
that he had had prior contact with them. The dispatcher would attempt to
obtain more.

The stories of both the man and the girls became increasingly
convoluted with the telling. They had started in Las Vegas, where the
car was rented. Their destination, however, was not California but
someplace in the midwest. They had come to California to pick up a third
girl but her parents had refused to let her travel.

The goal of the expedition, they said, was to take the three girls to
visit a fourth girl in Oklahoma. The girls said that the man
had promised to take them there, but earlier in the day he reneged on
his promise and now said he wouldn't. They told him that they wanted to
leave and go back home right away, but he refused to take them. He also
refused to let them call their relatives to tell them they were
okay.

The man sat alone at the picnic table as the ranger interviewed the
girls. He could hear snippets of their conversation and fully
understood what was being said.

"Isn't life amusing," he said to himself.

* * *

This story is true. It all unfolded last week as I transported
two pubescent (but not quite innocent) juvenile
females across state lines in
search of another girl. I am that creepy middle-aged man. I am also a
"gaywad" and a "pervert" who likes to sleep with little boys and who
wants to have sex with Michael Jackson.

Both of the girls hated me. I knew this because they told me so
on a regular basis.

"Fuck" is a major part of the lexicon of these particular girls, so
much so that even I started using the word.

"Watch your fucking language!" I yelled back at them.

You might say that these girls cursed like sailors, except that we
encountered a real sailor earlier in the day at a dock on the ocean. He
scolded the youngest girl, "You have a filthy little mouth for a young
lady," and he recommended to me that it be washed out with Zest.

I have taken many such road trips with surly adolescents. The
destinations are interesting, but the journey itself is usually more
important. Among other things, it is a chance to test my theories of parenting.

The two girls on this trip were "Bonkers," age 14, and "Drama Mama,"
who had just turned 11. These are the names they have for each other.
"Bonkers" is a play on her real name and isn't particularly descriptive.
She is no more bonkers than any other teen—i.e. only moderately
insane with occasional moments of unexpected lucidity. "Drama Mama,"
however, is a perfect description of that girl. She is an extraordinary
actress who turns every rest stop into a great
theatrical production.

There have to be rest stops because Bonkers smokes cigarettes. I am
not happy about this, but it is beyond my control, and it is not
pragmatic for me to try to cure her right now. We have at least come to an
understanding that we are going to have
smoking breaks no more than every
two hours.

When we do stop, there is always a danger that Drama Mama will wander
off, or steal the car keys, or lock herself in the car, or do something
else dramatic to delay and control the expedition. If the rest of us
want to go, then she wants to stay. If we want to stay, then she wants
to go. Her obstructions can be as predictable as clockwork. We can't just stop for
a five-minute smoking break. It is often a half-hour before D.M.'s
theatrics run their course.

I was not upset about D.M.'s obstructions. From my prior experience
with her, they were expected. Emotionally, this was a big expedition
for her. She had never been to the ocean before and had never known an
adult who would even consider such a trip. I realized that I
needed to let her control the pacing as much as possible. A half-hour
delay at a rest area meant a half-hour less at the beach, but once I
made this clear to her, my job was simply to sit and wait.

"That would make me sad," I said, with as flat and disinterested a
tone as possible. She knows that my camera is my most prized possession,
which is why she threatens it. I know, however, that it is also her
most prized possession when she is with me, which I why I know she won't
smash it. I won't give her the satisfaction of responding to her
theatrics, except to blandly state my position. This is how I expect,
eventually, to
make these tantrums go away.

I have only known her for a few weeks, but I have already learned to
include a Drama Mama factor in my plans. If we stop for a potty break,
I have to allow 20 minutes rather than five. If she wants to lock
herself in the car or wander off, I am willing to wait her out.

"Take your time," I tell her. "We'll go to the beach when you are
ready."

When we get to the beach or some other destination, I know that our
departure is going to involve a similar delay. Wherever
we go, I have to think about the parameters I am setting up for Drama
Mama. It is very much a chess game, where I have to think several moves
ahead of her.

When she is performing, Drama Mama knows no fear, which can be very
frightening to anyone else. If there is a cliff in front of her, she is
liable to run up to the edge of it to make the rest of us think she is
going to jump. She has no intention of jumping, but the risk is that
she might miscalculate, lose her footing and go over the edge anyway. My
response when she makes these suicidal gestures is to withdraw from
the scene completely. I turn my back on her and try to get out of her
view. No audience means no theatrics.

Bonkers, on the other hand, does know fear. She'll inch up to the edge
of the cliff, then pull back. This is healthy and normal and more like
my own response. I see Bonkers as a normal teen. She is given to
occasional distemper, but nothing like the continuous theatrics of Drama
Mama.

I have known Bonkers since she was about 6. She is the best friend of
my ex-wife's daughter, who is now in Oklahoma. Bonkers and I have
always had a good rapport, and when I heard that she had run away from
home and gone to her grandmother's house, I wanted to be
involved with her again.

It is a matter of debate whether she "ran away" or was "kicked out"
of her mom's house. Bonkers says she was kicked out, but I suspect that it
was a little of both.

Bonker's dad is in prison on drug charges and
her mom is a stripper in one of Las
Vegas' fine gentlemen's clubs. Bonkers says her mom is using drugs, but
Bonkers has no direct evidence of this and
her perception is prone to hyperbole. What is provable about mom is that she has had a rapid
turnover in boyfriends for as long as I have known her and that these
relationships tend to end with a Temporary Protective Order being filed
by one side or both. (They are a matter of record in Family Court.)
Bonkers has four siblings, each from different
fathers. In the years I have known her, they lived in about seven
different places, which changed with the boyfriends. They have lived in
tiny apartments as well as spacious houses in good neighborhoods
but with little furniture.

Probably the only thing that was constant in Bonkers life was her
friendship with my ex-step-daughter (XSD) and consequently her
relationship with me. These relationships were strained by the collapse
of my own household. For about three years, there was major
dysfunction in our home, and Bonker's mom felt—perhaps rightly
so—that Bonkers shouldn't go there. The relationship between
Bonkers and my ex-step-daughter continued, but it had to be conducted in
secret.

Prior to her running away, my last memory of Bonkers was about a year before,
when the XSD and I dropped her off secretly around the corner from her
house so Bonker's mom wouldn't know they were seeing each other. The
XSD was moving out of state, and I thought
at the time that I would probably
never see Bonkers again.

Now she's back in my life, and I
think I probably need her as much as
she needs me. In spite my lack of custody
or credentials, I am her dad,
or at least the closest she has ever had to one.
I don't know how our
relationship will evolve, but I hope to be a more active father to
her in the future. Reconnecting with her is part of my
own healing processing from the nuclear
explosion of my divorce. Now that
my ex-wife and I are 1200 miles apart, we seem to be getting along well.
With the dust settling at last, I want to pick up the shards of old
relationships and pull together something like a family, which
I have missed.

Whatever the falling out was between Bonkers and her mom, she ended up
at her paternal grandmother's house, and her mom did not try to contact
her there. In fact, since Bonkers left, her mom and siblings reportedly
lost another boyfriend and moved yet again, and Bonkers didn't even know
where they lived. I am sure that Bonkers could find her mom if she
wanted, but it was clear that the relationship had burned out and that
Grandma's house was the better place for her.

When I made contact with Bonkers, her grandmother was about to file for
permanent guardianship over her—which was a whole fascinating area of Family
Court that I didn't yet have much experience with. I helped Grandma
with the paperwork and went with them to court, and the guardianship was
approved last Tuesday.

We left for California the same afternoon. We had taken a couple of day
trips since she moved to Grandma's, but I didn't want to cross state
lines with Bonkers until her status was settled. Grandma seemed comfortable with me,
and she gave me verbal permission to take her. I didn't have permission
in writing, but the chaos level in this situation was already so high
that I didn't feel it was necessary.

Drama Mama came with the package. She was also a ward of Grandma. (She
was actually a niece, not a grandchild.) Drama Mama's parents had been
drug addicts. Her dad died when she was young and her mom was murdered
by her boyfriend fairly recently. (I don't know
when or the circumstances.)
Obviously, D.M. had suffered
through a truckload of childhood trauma,
and her theatrics were part of her coping mechanism.

Lest you get too sentimental about how D.M. lost her mom, I assure
you that she plays it to the hilt.
"I want to join my Mom!" she cried
during one of her tantrums during an earlier
hike, when she threatened to jump
off a unspecified cliff because she wasn't getting her way.
She looked up at the
sky, real tears flowing from her eyes.
"Mom, please take me!"

"Bravo!" I replied, applauding her performance. "All I ask
is if you jump, please try to keep
yourself together. I would rather you made a small stain than a big
one. Please don't scatter body parts all over the place."

I like Drama Mama. When she isn't tantruming, she is exuberant, fun
and smart. Owing to previous experiences in my own background, I
believe I understand D.M. and know how to manage her. If she were
an adult, she would fit all of the diagnostic criteria for Borderline
Personality Disorder: unstable mood, frequent suicidal gestures,
risk-taking behaviors, manipulation of others, constant theatrics. This
diagnosis, however, isn't officially
given to youth. Most teenagers are borderline
by definition, and they may grow out of it.

I invited Drama Mama to join us on our earlier day trips because she was
now essentially a sister to Bonkers, and I didn't want to leave her out.
On our very first outing, we tried to take a hike, and she obstructed it
at every opportunity. (See earlier essay: "Meet Drama Mama".) When we started hiking, she
wanted to go home. If we started to head home, she wanted to keep
hiking. Her position on anything could reverse in an instant. Our first
hike was aborted after she took off into the woods and I had to chase
her down. This was okay by me, because we had already done plenty of
things that day, and I could see she needed more time.

By the time of our California trip, I was reasonably confident that I
had control over her. There would be obstructions at every turn, but
they were already lessening. We had had a couple of showdowns already,
and I think I won. My goal was to train her to negotiate rather than
tantrum and to choose a single coherent position rather than flipping
every few minutes.

The main aim of the California trip was to pick up 16-year-old Liz,
another friend of the XSD who I had known for years
and who was the product of another complex family with
a drug history. After the trip, I was supposed to drive both her and
Bonkers to Oklahoma, where they would stay for a few weeks with the XSD.
Liz was supposed to be in Bakersfield, and my favorite beach is at Morro
Bay, two hours beyond that. This would be a perfect opportunity to take
the girls to the ocean! I invited both Bonkers and D.M. to come with
me, and Grandma agreed to let them go.

When we got almost to Bakersfield, we received some startling
news: Liz wasn't
in Bakersfield but in Sacramento, four hours north. Furthermore, her
parents decided arbitrarily that she couldn't go, even though she had
made the trip with me before—during a time when they
were providing no support to her at all.
These new circumstances made me change my
plans. I no longer cared to make the 20 hour drive to Oklahoma. I would
simply put Bonkers on a plane in Las Vegas for a fraction of the
cost.

This is when all four of the girls said I had ruined their lives.
Bonkers said she was afraid of planes and didn't want to fly alone. The
advance purchase requirements also meant that she couldn't get to
Oklahoma for XSD's birthday, which was supposedly imperative. Sending
Bonkers by plane also meant that Drama Mama couldn't go, which was never
really part of the plan anyway.

Expletives were hurled at me in person and through cellphones (which
were constantly in operation during our trip thanks to OUR WONDERFUL
CULTURE OF COMMMUNICATION). That's okay. I am used to expletives being
hurled at me by children and adults. It is only physical objects that I
don't want thrown at me, and Drama Mama had begun using some of those
already.

But we were still going to the beach! The girls flip-flopped about this
several times, but I was in charge of this expedition, and I said we
were going.

We spent the first night camped in the Mojave Desert. They slept in the
tent, and I slept in the car, far enough away from them that they didn't
keep me up all night. When the sun rose at about 5:30, they were
remarkably compliant and got in the car without a fight. I attribute
this to the fact that they weren't quite awake and the drama machine
hadn't had time to warm up.

After only modest theatrics and a couple of smoking breaks, we got to
the beach. This wasn't just any beach but the most interesting
coastline south of San Francisco. Morro Bay has both crashing surf and
a fully enclosed bay. There are sea lions and sea otters playing in the
bay as well as sand dunes, tidepools and sea cliffs nearby. I had been here many
times before, so I knew the routes to take to keep kids amused—as
well as the routes to avoid to keep from spending money and triggering
their begging circuits.

Our first stop was the endless Strand beach facing the open ocean. I had
no problem at all coaxing the girls out of the car here. Drama Mama,
who had never seen the ocean before, was immediately drawn into the
surf. She rejoiced in it! The water was cold, but soon she was totally
soaked. She had to challenge every wave and pick up every shell on the
beach. The ocean and her were made for each other! I took photos of
her as she frolicked, but she was not putting on a show for an audience.
The only relationship that mattered was between her and the sea. She
was testing it, pushing at it, seeing what it would do. The ocean
seemed to give her the kind of intense stimulation she needed.

Bonkers, on the other hand, spent nearly the whole time pacing back and
forth on the beach, talking on her cell phone (actually my cell phone).
It seemed to be surgically attached to her ear, and no crashing surf or
dramatic scenery was going to remove it.

You may wonder what teenagers talk about when they spend hours on the
phone. Well, I'll tell you: very nearly nothing. Teenage phone calls
are just about the most vapid form of communication known to man. One
modality is to describe exactly what you are doing on a moment-to-moment
basis, like "I'm painting my toenails now." The only other mode is
endless gossip about the every-changing alliances and feuds within their
teenage tribe. In Shakespeare's words, teenage phone calls are "a
tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Bonkers was on the line to her boyfriend, the XSD, Liz and a couple
of other friends.
There was so much to say that the ocean
was irrelevant. If the waves lapped by accident against Bonkers'
feet, she quickly retreated to the warmer sand.

I let Drama Mama control the pacing, and eventually she lead us back
to the car. Of course, as soon as it appeared that we wanted to to go,
she suddenly didn't. Like adult borderlines, she has a built-in fear
that she is going to be cheated. Now that she had found the ocean, she
felt certain I was going to steal it away from her.

I coaxed her into the car by telling her that we were going boating
next. I told them that I brought boats with me, but they didn't
believe me. We drove to the city dock, and I pulled two inflatable
boats out of the trunk and pumped them up. I insisted that the girls wear
life jackets, and I told them that they couldn't bring cell phones
because they might get wet and be ruined. (I wish this could happen
more often!)

We paddled across the narrow neck of the bay to the barrier dunes
that protected it from the open ocean. There we beached our craft and
hiked across the big dunes to the ocean side. We came down to a beach
that was similar to the Strand but more wild and rugged. We hunted for
shells there, which were of better quality than those on the Strand. We
found crab shells, a strange oozing blob called a sea cucumber and
many round sand dollars. A sand dollar is a silver-dollar shaped shell
that Bonkers was thrilled to learn had the shape of a marijuana leaf
engraved on it. I took her photo as she proudly displayed
one of them.

When we had boated back to the car, Bonkers quickly reconnected with
her cell phone and with all the news she had missed in the past hour. I
told the girls that we would be going to one more place along the shore,
then we would be heading back toward Vegas as soon as it got dark.
Drama Mama took this opportunity to throw a major fit. She said didn't
want to leave tonight; she wanted to stay and camp. I told her this
wasn't the plan. I said I had told her guardian that we would be
back tomorrow, which meant that we had to leave tonight.

Secretly, I knew there was a campground at the Montaña de Oro
State Park, where we would be going next. I had planned all along that
we might stay there, but we had no reservation. I didn't dare mention
this campground to D.M. since it would be taken as a promise even if the
campground turned out to be full.

D.M. threw her tantrum at the docks, and I waited it out. She demanded
over and over that we stay overnight and I replied calmly, over
and over, that we would be heading out at dark. I told her that if she
wanted to burn up the rest of the sunlight on a temper tantrum, she was
free to do it.

The tantrum eventually ran its course, and we drove to the state
park, which was in a remote location about 10 miles south of Morro Bay.
There we found that there were indeed camping spaces available. I had
to give D.M. a lecture then, saying that I had planned to stay here all
along but that the tantrum nearly prevented it from happening. I asked
D.M. to pick a campsite, and she did, while Bonkers raised no
protest.

We parked the car at our new campsite
then walked a quarter mile to yet
another beach. This was a rocky and rugged one on Spooners Cove. In
contrast to the other beaches, this one was marked by dramatic cliffs
and rock outcroppings, and the beach consisted not of sand,
but of curious pebbles with holes in them like Swiss cheese. D.M. climbed the cliffs without fear and scared
me to the point where I withdrew from her a couple of times. Bonkers
tried to talk on her cell phone, but there didn't seem to be any
reception, so she joined us in climbing and beachcombing.

We got back to the campsite as the sun was going down. There,
Bonkers discovered something very disturbing: There was no cell phone
coverage anywhere!

Now it was Bonkers' turn to throw a fit. There were calls that
absolutely had to be made! I told her that they would have to wait until
morning. She said, no, they had to be made NOW, and if she couldn't do
it, then she wanted to leave and go home immediately.

I said "No." They had wanted to camp, and now we were camping. Part
of the camping experience, I said, is that you sometimes have to go
without modern conveniences.

Bonkers ordered me to drive her down the road a couple of miles so
she could make her calls, and I still said no. I said that her calls
would have to wait until daylight.

I proceeded to set up the tent.

Drama Mama then joined in the chorus. She wanted to leave, too! I
tried to point out that just two hours before she had thrown a fit that
she wanted to stay and camp. Unfortunately, this kind of logic is futile with
D.M. Apparently what happened in the meantime is that the circumstances
totally changed. Whatever it was she was raging about at the
docks, I must not have delivered it properly. I had also become an "asshole" since then.

Bonkers demanded that I give her change for the payphone near the
entrance of the campground. Again I refused, but the girls took off in
that direction anyway.

When they came back they were both raging. I can easily manage Drama
Mama alone or Bonkers alone, but when they join forces, they are a
formidable foe. They reinforced each other and refused to back down.
The crescendo of "fucks" and "I hate you Glenns" became louder and more
aggressive, and it threatened to disrupt our neighbors in this quiet
campground.

"Okay, that's enough," I said. "I'm going to the beach and will be
back in a few minutes. We are not leaving. We are going to spend the
night here. You can either sleep in the tent or in the car, but we are
staying."

Then I took off briskly toward the beach, making sure I had the
car keys in my pocket. I knew that the loud "fucks" would stop as soon
as I left.

When I came back to the car, the girls were inside and the tent had
been packed up and put back into the trunk. They were determined to go,
and I was determined to stay. Apparently, this was going to be a test
of wills, and there was no way I was going to let them win.

I assessed the battlefield and the weapons available on both sides.
I controlled the car keys, which were in my pocket. If they had them,
they probably wouldn't have driven away, but they might have taunted me
by threatening to drive or by moving the car around the campground.
(They had both become pretty good drivers, at least in the desert,
thanks to Yours Truly.)

I may have had the keys but they controlled the car and its
contents, including my most valuable possessions: my camera and
laptop computer. Either of them could be damaged if they got angry enough.

They also had the power to scream and use foul language, which they have
employed liberally before. Usually, I don't mind this. In general, I am
not concerned with a child's words or "attitude," only his behavior.
You can say anything you want about me and call me any name in the book;
all I really care about is that you do what I tell you to and not do
what I tell you not to. Yelling and bad language are harmless in the
wilderness, in the car, or even down at the rocky beach, but in the
campground they were highly improper and could attract unwanted attention. My counter-measure was
simply to retreat to the beach whenever the cursing got too loud. They
could follow me if they wanted and yell at me there.

Overall, the terrain and weather were to my strategic advantage. We had
no flashlights, but the sky was clear and the moon was full, so there
was enough light for us to move between the campground and the beach, where
I anticipated the main battle happening. It was about five miles by road
back to civilization, and getting there would require walking without a
flashlight through a dark and scary forest that the girls had previously
compared to "The Blair Witch Project." I knew they wouldn't cross
that boundary.

I also knew that there were other boundaries that Bonkers wouldn't
cross. She wouldn't smash something valuable of mine or even threaten
to. She also wasn't going to lie. She wouldn't, for example, call 911
or tell a neighbor that I had kidnapped them. Bonkers was basically
like any other addict who is deprived of their drug: irritable and
non-cooperative. In this case, it was her cell phone addiction that I
was interfering with.

My greatest fear was that things would get out of control. The girls
didn't intend to hurt me or themselves, but in their fevered state, they
could do something stupid that might cause unintentional damage, like
when D.M. runs up to the edge of a cliff.

With the girls in the car, I took the tent out of the trunk and
started setting it up again. They then got out of the car and began
yelling at me. When a certain decibel level was reached, I took off for
the beach again. I was prepared to go through this cycle as many times
as necessary.

This time they followed me after a few minute's delay.
On the beach, under the full moon, the main
battle was waged. They spewed invective and
distorted adolescent logic,
while I calmly repeated my position. The sun had gone down and
it would be about 8 hours before it came back again. I told the girls
that we could leave in the morning as soon as the sun came over the
horizon. In the meantime, we could all get some sleep or we could continue the argument
all night. The choice was theirs.

I tried to keep things light and funny, and Bonkers had to work hard to
maintain her anger.

"Stop making me laugh!" she yelled.

I taunted her about her inability to produce tears on demand like Drama
Mama could. She insisted that she could produce tears and she worked
herself into a great tizzy trying to prove it.

Drama Mama was along for the ride. It didn't really matter to her what
she was arguing about, she just needed to oppose me. Unlike Bonkers,
however, she could hit, bite and throw rocks, and I constantly kept my
eye on her in the dim light to make sure I wasn't blindsided. I could
see her form in the moonlight, but if she threw a rock at me, I wouldn't
be able to see it coming at me.

I said, "No rocks!" and she seemed to respect that. She, too, had
boundaries, but they were much more flexible than Bonkers'. In the
middle of my debate with Bonkers, she hit me across the face with
her sandal.

I immediately withdrew and started running back to the campground. I
wanted to get back to the car before they did so I could secure my
valuables. I was prepared to outlast my opponents, all night if
necessary, but I wanted to put my camera and computer in a safe place.

When I got back to the car, I found that they had once again
disassembled the tent and put it in the trunk. I again set it up, and I
cached my valuables. When they came back from the beach and started
spewing at me, I once again headed for the beach.

That's when the park ranger arrived. Someone had dialed 911 from the
payphone at the entrance to the campground. It turns out that this was
Bonkers, back at the beginning of our battle. (The ranger had
responded earlier but had come back now for a second look.) Although she had no
change for the payphone, Bonkers had tried to dial her friends anyway. One of
the numbers she tried was the XSD in Oklahoma. The area code
for Oklahoma was 918. By mistake, Bonkers dialed 9118, i.e. "911."

The ranger encountered the girls first, who were following me again
toward
the beach. He asked them who they were with, and that started the whole
chain of events. It took about two hours to sort it all out. I think I
put the rangers at ease fairly quickly, but they still had an
outstanding missing-person report on Bonkers that they had to resolve.
They called Grandma to confirm that the girls had permission to
travel with me, but then she had to fax the guardianship papers to them
to prove that she had legal custody. She didn't have a fax machine,
which meant she had to find one at 10 o'clock at night.

As we were waiting for the fax to come, the girls sat in the ranger's
truck to keep warm. Drama Mama soon nodded off on Bonkers' shoulder.
With the Ranger's
permission, I went over to talk to Bonkers. I told her that things
were going to take a while, so she might as well get some sleep. Did
they want to sleep in the tent or in the car?

She said they wanted to sleep in the car, which Drama Mama groggily
seconded. This was their last act of defiance for the day, since they
knew I preferred they sleep in the tent. The back seat of the car
really wasn't big enough for two people; nonetheless, they
squeezed in there, heavily padded with sleeping bags. Drama Mama fell
to sleep instantly, as it must have been tiring to produce so much drama in one day.

After the girls settled in, I bent over Bonkers to give her a hug.
There was a real look of remorse on her face. "Did I get you in
trouble?" she asked sweetly.

"No," I replied warmly. "Everything's fine." Then I kissed her
goodnight.

Indeed, everything was fine, BECAUSE I WON. The whole police incident
may not have made much of an impression on Drama Mama, who has probably
been through worse, but I am sure it changed Bonkers. I think she is
going to think twice about defying me in the future.

In the morning, I awoke with the sun. I could have packed up everything
and hit the road with the girls still asleep in the back, but I thought
it was important to wake them up first. I wanted to make it clear at
least to Bonkers that we were still at the campground. However, I
didn't go "Ha, ha!" about it like I might normally do. I think the
lesson will be memorable to her without any explicit reminders.

Drama Mama was another story. She was just as ornery this day as
she was the day before. I didn't try to rush her: We went back to
the Strand for a couple of hours, then we took our time heading back to
Vegas, but the tantrums soon came back.
As we were heading east from Bakersfield in the evening,
things really got really dangerous. Can you guess what she was tantruming
about? She didn't want to go home, she said. She wanted to camp another
night!

"I want to fucking camp!" she screamed at me over and over, for
nearly two hours solid between Bakersfield and Barstow. I have part of
this rampage on record, because Bonkers recorded it with a video camera.
The tantrum was only interrupted when Bonkers played the tape back for
Drama Mama. They both thought it was hilarious, but anyone else
watching it would see a hell-child out of control.

As we passed Barstow, the abuse became more intense, and I didn't
know what to do. D.M. was sitting in the front seat and of course
refused to wear a seat belt. I preferred to have her there so she
didn't hit me from behind. She was punching me on the shoulder, and I
worried that she would hit me on the side of the head while I was
driving. She was also threatening to jump out the passenger door at
highway speed, and she made the gestures of opening the door. I knew she
didn't intend to jump, but the danger was that she would miscalculate
and go out the door anyway.

I didn't want to stop the car, because that would give her an
opportunity to get out and walk away. I had experienced this kind of
behavior before in children and borderline adults, but I was beginning
to doubt my own ability to handle the situation. Things became
especially disturbing when she threatened to break every button on the
car's console and actually started kicking at them. I feigned no
interest, saying that it was a rental car so I didn't care what she
broke, but she kept doing it anyway.

"I'll tear that mirror off," she said, pointing to my rear-view
mirror, and she started twisting at it.

That's when I slapped her.

I did it across her arm, hard enough to hurt. She was stunned for
a moment, then she started pulling at the mirror again.

I slapped her again.

"If you mess with the car, I will hit you again," I said.

It is a technique that has been banished from modern parenting
manuals, but it worked! She retreated to the back seat while muttering
something about child abuse.

She pretended to call 911 on her cell phone, which forced me to use
another extreme technique. With one hand on the steering wheel, I
reached into the back seat with the other to try to grab the cell phone.
The car lurched from side to side on the highway, which terrified both
girls. They assured me that no one would be calling 911 as long as I
kept both hands on the wheel.

Now that I knew something they were afraid of, I could play the same
game they did. I could produce my own theatrical rage and take my hands
off the wheel whenever they got out of line.

The verbal muttering from D.M. continued at a low level for the
remainder of the trip. The important thing, however, was that the
physical abuse stopped. My own use of violence should not be
underestimated. It is probably the only thing that would have got me out
of the mess I was in.

By the time we got to the Grandma's house in Las Vegas, everything
was calm and cheerful. We told Grandma about
the fun things we had done while all of
us conveniently omitted any conflicts. The incident with the park
rangers was attributed to Bonkers' innocent mistake of
dialing 9118 instead of 918. No one was to blame for that.

I told Grandma that D.M. was "no problem at all," although she didn't
seem to believe me. "That can't be her," she said.

I wasn't disappointed in the trip in the slightest.
It was much as I
expected. As I said, it's the journey that is important, not the
destination. We made no future plans,
but I suspect there will be other
expeditions. I have no discomfort about
traveling with feral
children or
being mistaken for a child molester.
It was actually quite fun!

Some men climb cliffs. Others jump out of airplanes, train wild
animals or report on wars from the front lines. I choose to deal with
adolescents, which can be every bit as dangerous and exhilarating. For me, these adventures are more rewarding than any others.

The keys to success are to never show fear and
never let them get the
upper hand.